The poll, which measured Republican and Democratic sentiment toward the CIA, showed that Democrats had started to view the CIA with a net favorability of 32%, compared with 4% net favorability for Republicans.

An NBC/WSJ poll from 2015 showed Republicans viewing the CIA with a net favorability of 27%, versus -4% from Democrats.

The divide in the latest poll was even steeper between Trump supporters and those who supported his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The CIA had net favorability of 39% among Clinton supporters in December, compared with 2% among Trump supporters.

"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," the Trump transition team said in a statement released after The Washington Post published the CIA's findings last month. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'"

Trump lashed out at the CIA through his Twitter account several days later. "Unless you catch 'hackers' in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking," he tweeted.

Data from Pew Research Center had similarly shown Democrats' and Republicans' views of the CIA to be predictably partisan before the 2016 reversal identified in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in January 2015 highlighted, for example, that Republicans viewed five out of eight government agencies included in the survey less favorably than Democrats (the EPA, the IRS, the CDC, the VA, and the NSA). The only agency Republicans viewed more favorably than Democrats at the time was the CIA, with Democrats giving the CIA a net favorability of 6%, compared with 35% among Republicans.